Last year, TiVo users experienced glitches that auto-erased recorded content. The culprit was Macrovision DRM, and it's back and as bad as ever in TiVo Series 3 for HD. CNet documents brand new errors that prevented viewing and recording content. (Link via BoingBoing.)

Unfortunately, glitches like this are only part of Series 3 users' worries. Hollywood and cable providers have forced TiVo to remove TiVoToGo and implement a host of DRM restrictions in this device. If a program is marked as "copy never" or "copy once," your TiVo must obey -- it doesn't matter whether the copy limit was put there on purpose by the cable provider or was a technical error, as in CNet's case.

John Batelle over at SearchBlog was kind enough to invite me to do a short interview about a variety of Google and YouTube copyright questions. Among other subjects touched on, I opine that all the hand-wringing analysts fretting about the copyright implications of GooTube may have it backwards:

So I think the YouTube acquisition may well represent a legal opportunity for Google (and the Internet industry generally), rather than a vulnerability. After all, litigation to define the copyright rules for new online services are inevitable -- better to choose your battles and plan for them, rather than fleeing the fight and letting some other company create bad precedents that will haunt you later.

After a wait of nearly three years, Judge Hood in the Eastern District of Michigan finally ruled yesterday on the government's request that the court dismiss a lawsuit brought by a group of Muslim and Arab-American associations challenging the constitutionality of PATRIOT Act Section 215. As you may recall, Section 215 authorizes the government to obtain a secret order from the FISA court demanding business records or any other information that investigators think is relevant to a terrorism investigation. The court's decision? Motion denied!

The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security is funding the development of software to keep tabs on international publications expressing unfavorable views about the United States. According to the Times:

The new software would allow much more rapid and comprehensive monitoring of the global news media, as the Homeland Security Department and, perhaps, intelligence agencies look "to identify common patterns from numerous sources of information which might be indicative of potential threats to the nation," a statement by the department said.

This kind of monitoring could affect the willingness of journalists to report negative information or controversial opinions about the United States, and otherwise chill online speech protected by the First Amendment.

Cory over at Boing Boing blogged last week about an online service that helps you manage bills and informal cash flows with your roommates and friends. The service, called BillMonk, is interesting, but what's even more interesting is BillMonk's privacy policy, which is the shortest, clearest, and most substantively protective policy we've read in a long while.

Today, a federal court shot down yet another attempt by the government to use "national security" as a blank check for illegal surveillance. Refusing a claim that the government could not even confirm or deny whether it had listened in on calls between attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights and their clients, the court ordered the government to provide that information to the court in secret first, then set up a process to possibly provide that information to the attorneys involved. The court confirmed: "It is a cardinal rule of litigation that one side may not eavesdrop on the other's privileged attorney-client communications."